BlizzCon 2018 — Photo Highlights from the Show Floor, Cosplay, Merch, and More

I'm bringing the BlizzCon 2018 experience to you with photos from all throughout the event.

BlizzCon 2018 is now officially in the books, as last weekend, gamers from all corners of the world came pouring into the Anaheim Convention Center for a peek into what Blizzard has to offer coming up. Though we didn’t see any emergency Ashe and Bob cosplay, I saw quite the variety in cosplay. I witnessed new games like Diablo Immortal and Warcraft III Reforged announced live, along with getting to play these games exclusively shown at the convention.

What primarily drew my attention had to be the vast demo booths for games like Overwatch and World of Warcraft: Classic. These great games got the grand stages they deserved to be placed on. And of course, plenty of fans flocked into all the booths to keep these demos always occupied — minusDiablo Immortal at times, but I digress.

These demo booths truly add to the con experience that you just can’t get from playing demos at home. Sure you get the game demo, but you’re missing out on the special stage to pull you into the experience with thousands of other fans. The Opening Ceremony was also something special: I felt really a part of the community as I got to react to all of the big announcements with everyone around me.

When I wasn’t going through interviews or demoing upcoming titles, I got to walk the show floor a bit and see tons of great cosplays. I was lucky enough to snag some great pictures of some of them to share. Going back and looking through my photos, I noticed quite the load of Overwatch cosplay pics which makes sense, since I’m a big fan of the game — so I hope you dig Genji cosplay as much as I do!

Next up, I hit the Overwatch World Cup to catch South Korea totally dominating this year’s tournament. There was plenty of excitement across all the teams of course, but there is just something about seeing the powerhouse that is the South Korean Overwatch team.

Some of those matches were intense — almost as intense as the fans in attendance. I think almost every major play made by teams was received with a roaring wave of cheers and screams from fans in the arena, especially in those final rounds and critical overtime moments.

As a first time live spectator of high-level Overwatch, I thoroughly enjoyed watching these teams pull amazing plays and show insane precision and skill in the game. Now if you excuse me, I need to work on my pocket Hanzo so I can catch up to Fleta’s level.

Another huge part of BlizzCon is, of course, the merchandise and Blizzard didn’t disappoint with this year’s exclusives. I’m not sure if it’s the convention environment or the wide variety of collectibles, but BlizzCon was almost forcing me to spend all my money! It’s too bad that the Mercy Nendoroid sold out; it’s so bad because I was too tempted to wait in that massive line just for one.

Other than Overwatch stuff, there was merchandise for everyone, from game mats, to figures, to pillows, and plushes from all of the Blizzard titles. Here’s a look at what they had to offer for BlizzCon 2018:

And there you have it — a good chunk of what I saw on the show floor at BlizzCon 2018. From great cosplay to champions being decided, I would say this was a successful convention full of great moments that I was lucky enough to experience and share. I recommend anybody and everybody that is a Blizzard fan to make the voyage down to Anaheim to get the experience themself when BlizzCon returns in 2019.

Of course, there were lots of other fun experiences such as playing exclusive demos and interviews, but being on the show floor brings some perspective as to the scale for this amazing community. Now that my first BlizzCon is done with, I’m already hoping I get a chance to be back next year.

If you weren’t able to play any of the demos from this year’s BlizzCon, don’t worry: I got you covered with my hands-on previews of Diablo Immortal andWarcraft III Reforged. Stay posted throughout the coming week as I give some inside details from all the announcements from this year’s BlizzCon.

Zack Potter is a Staff Writer at DualShockers with a special love for fighting games and their competitive scenes. When he's not button mashing in Street Fighter, he is studying journalism at Fresno State.